Hello,
Sorry if this is a dumb question. I am new to telescopes, as this is my first. I am generally pretty handy with technology but this has me stumped. My Evolution Alt/Az mount keeps missing its GoTos.
It is worst if I swing from one pole to another, or move around a fair bit. But it seems to just not want to center on objects. Even with my 32mm plossl and 40mm, often it completely misses. Tonight, it missed the moon. Further when I centered on known objects (sirius) and attempted to add them to my alignment, it said that they were too far out of location.
Align Process.
Either with HC using city and date information, or on tablet through skysafari (gps) both have the same problem.
Step one, level the telescope (the ball level is perfectly flat.) and put it on celestron antivibration pads on solid driveway.
Center on first star with wide field eyepiece. Change to the 13mm center with the last movement up and to the right. Align star one. Move to star two, and follow the same process, as well as with star 3. I am pretty meticulous about it. After doing this, I get an alignment successful message. If I jump back and forth to close by stars it seems to be okay, but if I swing about 90(ish)* or more, that is when it starts to fail. I will tell it to go back to one of my alignment stars and it will completely miss. If I look at my red dot finder, it will be well off of the target.
It works the same with Sky Safari, and the HC. It will initially appear to be okay, I can bounce around a bit, but eventually (and quickly) it starts missing objects, particularly when swinging from one pole to the next.
How accurate are these goto's supposed to be?
Observations - This is a consistent issue, that I originally thought was associated with my ipad going to sleep. I disabled the sleep function, and attempted it with the hand control, neither of these helped.
Slop (I think you call this backlash) - Altitude adjustments are instantaneous, in both directions even at low levels like 2. Azimuth has a noticeable delay (8 seconds or so) at lower speeds when changing directions left to right.
I have attempted to adjust the backlash on azimuth and have reduced it to around 3-4 seconds. While utilizing a lot of the available backlash slider.
Lastly, the azimuth adjustments make squeek squeek sound when at low speed. Altitude does not do exhibit this.
I am running the latest firmware.
Thanks in advance.
John
Edited by elcid79, 23 January 2022 - 06:06 PM.